Most beautiful places and cultures &Marketing business

Marketing survives and grows in the social context. All marketing decisions have social implications. Marketing must act responsibility and ethically toward consumers and society.

The societal marketing concept is an emerging concept. It holds that organizational objectives should be achieved through customer need satisfaction in ways that protect the interests of the consumers and safeguard the well-being of society. Marketing must be socially responsible. It should be accountable to society for its actions.

The societal marketing concept has the following features:

a) Social responsibility orientation of marketing to enhance social welfare. It can be by improving environmental quality, creating employment opportunities, supporting socially desirable issues, and meeting needs. Such programmes are well-designed.
b) Customer need satisfaction in the target market through the delivery of superior value products compared to competitors.
c) Integrated marketing efforts though organization wide marketing think. All activities related to marketing are assigned to the marketing department.
d) Profits through proper considerations to the interests of consumers, organization and society.

The social responsibility of marketing is both towards customers and society.

This concept holds that the key to achieving organizational objectives consists of market orientation. Integration of marketing activities to satisfy the needs of customers. This concept has the following features:

a. Target Market: Well defined target market. Tailored making programme which is efficient and effective than competitors.
b. Customer Orientation: Under the marketing concept all organizational activities are customer-oriented. All activities of the organization are focused on determining and satisfying customer needs. Customer needs are defined from the customer’s point of view. The concern for customer is the uppermost. Customer is regarded as the key to organizational success.
• The marketing activities begin and end with customers. The customer is the King/ Queen. The key to organizational success is customer satisfaction. What is good for the customer is good for the organization. Marketing is customer-driven.
• All departments in the organization “think customer”. They work together to satisfy customer needs. Top management adopts customer-oriented philosophy, values and beliefs.

c. Integrated Marketing: Under the marketing concept all marketing activities are organizationally coordinated under the marketing department to satisfy customer needs.
i) Various marketing functions work together. Such functions can be product management, marketing research, pricing distribution, promotion etc. The marketing department is the focal point for all such activities.

ii) Marketing department is well coordinated with other departments like finance, production, human resources and research and development to foster team work. All employees work toward customer satisfaction. All departments work together to serve the customer’s interests. Service support to customer is strengthened.
d. Objectives Achievement:
I) The ultimate purpose of the marketing concept is the achievement of organization’s objectives. For private business, the objective is profit, market share, sales etc. For public and non-profit organizations, it is surviving and attracting funds to provide service.

II) The marketing concept stresses that organizations can best achieve objectives through customer value and satisfaction. Organizations should not only satisfy but also delight the customers by delivering more than they promise. For example, helmet and leg-guard with motorbike.

The marketing concept is a new way of thinking about organizational activities. Managers focus all activities at determining customer needs in the target market. Profit through customer satisfaction is the objective of a business organization. All departments “think customer”.

a) The production Concept:
This concept holds that customers prefer widely available and low cost products. This concept has the following features:

a. Production-orientation of the organization. It aims at selling what can be produced.

b. High production efficiency through improved technology, standardization and mass production.

c. Mass distribution of the product to facilitate wider availability.

d. Low price to attract customers. Price is regarded as critical for marketing.

Under this concept, mangers concentrate on increasing production volume, reducing costs, and mass distribution. Many Nepalese organizations are still working under the production concept. This concept is widespread in developing countries.

This concept is useful to expand the market share. But it leads to impersonal and poor-quality service. It ignores non-price variables.

b) The Product Concept:
This concept holds that customers favour products that offer good quality, high performance, and innovative features. This concept has the following features.
i. Quality orientation of the organization. It aims at improving the product through innovation.
ii. Superior products at reasonable price; long lasting well-made products.
iii. No concern for customer needs; product-orientation.
iv. Quality improvements over time to attract customers.

Under this concept, managers focus on making superior products. They disregard customer preferences. They give excessive attention to product. But changing customer preferences and technology make the products obsolete.

We know that marketing is related with customers. All activities of marketing become possible with customers. And without customers no work of marketing can be done. So that marketing must have responsibility towards customers. And marketing should protect customer’s interests thorough:

a) Product Quality: Provision of reliable products at reasonable prices. Guarantee, warranty and after-sales service offers should be honoured. Adulteration and activities that cause health hazard should not be undertaken.
b) Product Safety: Provision of safe products that do not cause injury or accidents. Child safety should be a priority.
c) Honesty: Marketing should have honesty in promotion. Misleading, false and unethical advertising should be avoided. It should not indulge in bribe and kick-offs.
d) Consumer Rights: Marketing should respect and protect consumer rights. It should not indulge in restrictive trade practices, profiteering, black marketing and hoarding. It should be proactive to consumerism and environmental protection movements.

This concept holds that individual customer is the key to achieving organizational objectives. Marketing is done to satisfy the needs of individual customer.
This concept has the following features:
i. Focus on individual customer needs and values.
ii. Tailoring marketing programme to the needs of individual customer. Customized marketing mix. Individualized promotion and distribution.
iii. Capture larger share of each customer’s expenditure.
iv. One-to-one marketing integration.
v. Profit through customer loyalty and retention.

Organizations collect information about the profile of each and every customer. They use e-commerce and the latest information technology. This is useful to companies selling lots of high value products. Such products need periodic replacement or upgrading together changing environment.

This concept holds that customers should be persuaded into buying through aggressive selling and promotion efforts. This concept has following features:

a) Selling orientation of the organization which aims at satisfying the seller’s needs. It focuses on products. The aim is to sell what is made.

b) Aggressive selling and promotion to attract customer; pushing the products in the market for high sales volume.

c) No concern for customer’s needs.

d) Customer persuasion into buying existing products through a range of selling techniques.

Under this concept, managers focus on stimulating sales through promotional tools. This concept is dominant in Nepalese organizations. It is popular with non-profit organizations for social marketing. It is also used for political marketing. This concept is useful where overcapacity exists.

a) Target Market: No single product can satisfy everyone in the market. The total market is segmented. Segmentation is the process of dividing the total market into homogeneous groups of customers. Members in the group share similar needs and characteristics. Each group requires a distinct marketing mix. The chosen segments for marketing constitute the target market.
• Target market consists of actual and potential customers chosen segments. They have want to satisfy and ability and willingness to engage in exchange relationships.
• Target market can be consumer, industrial, institutional and global.

b) Marketing Mix: Organizations must and manage an effective marketing mix that satisfies customer needs in a target market. Marketing mix is a blend of product, price, place and promotion tools. It is offered for customer need satisfaction.

The components of marketing mix are known as 4 Ps:
• Product: It is offer to the target market.
• Price: It is what customers pay.
• Place: It is getting the product to target market.
• Promotion: It is communicating with target market.

1. Relationships: They are long-term mutually, satisfying relations with key parties- customers, suppliers, channels. The focus is to build lifetime loyal customers. Knowing customers and delivery of high customer value and satisfaction build relationships. They result in relationship marketing which ensures that customers remain as loyal customers.
2. Networks: They consist of the organization and its key stakeholders. They are the result of relationships.

Stakeholders consist of customers, suppliers, employees, technological partners, channel members, and advertising agencies. The organization has mutually beneficial relationships with them. Today, the competition is between marketing networks, not between the companies.

3. Supply chain: Supply chain is a value delivery network. Each party in the chain creates a higher value for the other party involved in the chain. In return, a part of value created is retained as profit by each party.

Supply chain directs marketing efforts at maintaining backward linkages consisting of relationships with the suppliers of raw materials, technology, finance and semi-finished products. Mutually beneficial relationships are built with key stakeholders to capture the value generated by the supply chain.

We know that, marketing is demand management. It stimulates demand for products. In marketing different activities are done such as pricing, promotion and exchange of ideas, goods and services etc.

Exchange is the total process of obtaining a desired product from someone by offering something of value in return. Exchange is the essence of marketing. It is a value creation process.
Five conditions should be satisfied for exchange to take place:
1. Two or more parties should participate (buyer and seller)
2. Each party must have something of value that the other party desires.
3. Each party should be capable of communication and delivery.
4. Each party should be free to accept or reject the offer.
5. Each party should believe that it is appropriate or desirable to deal with the other party.

In this way in marketing more than two parties are involved to exchange something what they have. One party may have money and other party may have things to exchange with each other. They exchange goods from money, service from money or other goods. Without exchange marketing can not take place. So that, exchange has close relation with marketing.

Value, satisfaction and quality are interrelated concept. Because customers focus to value, quality and satisfaction while purchasing the things form the market. To be familiar about these concepts very well below is their details:

i) Value: It is the ratio between what the customer gets and what he gives. The customer gets benefits and gives costs. Product choice is guided by the value provided by the product.
• Benefits of customer may be functional and emotional
• Cost of products can be monetary, time, energy and psychic.

Marketing should provide value to the customers by raising benefits and reducing costs.

b) Satisfaction: It is the customer’s perceived performance from a product in relation to the expectations.

The customer is dissatisfied if the performance matches the expectations; delighted if the performance exceeds expectations. Marketing aims for total customer satisfaction by matching product performance with expectations.

c) Quality: Quality is perception of product excellence by customers. It is linked to customer need satisfaction. Organizations adopt the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM). They continuously improve the quality of their products for customer satisfaction. Everyone is committed and involved to satisfy customer needs though quality improvement.

A product may be any thing that satisfies a need or want of a man. Organization develops products for the target market. Products can be of following types:

a) Goods: Physical goods such as food, clothing, books, cosmetics, computer etc. They are tangible and touchable in nature. And they also can be owned by individual.

b) Service: Intangible activities that can not be owned or touched by individual is service. Some examples are computer training, hairdressing, bike repair, management consultancy and lecturing in classroom. Most goods also deliver services. Like a computer provides data processing service to the users.

c) Ideas: Ideas include concepts, philosophies, causes and issues. Basic idea like environmental protection, consumerism, human rights, equality of sexes and property rights to women etc.

d) Experiences: Experiences are also like a product. Experiences like climbing the Mt. Everest, rafting trip in river, balloon flying, cable car ride etc.

e) Events: Time-based events such as Olympic game, South Asian Federation games, exhibitions, artistic performance, conventions etc.

f) Persons: Person is related with celebrity marketing for political leaders, movie stars, artists and professionals.

g) Place: Specific location such as country, region, city or village to attract tourists, factories, offices, residents etc. An example is “Visit Nepal 1998”.

h) Properties: They are intangible rights of ownership. They can be land, house, share, debenture etc.

i) Organization: They are building of strong and favorable public image. Examples are: SONY- It’s ‘SONY’, PHILIPS- “Let’s make things better”. Hulas “Why buy others when Hulas is there”.

j) Information: Production and distribution of information by schools, universities, newspapers, magazines, internet, CDs etc.

Where, brands help the customer to identify products of different company or industry of different country.

Needs, Wants and Demand represents the language of marketing. They come under the core concept of marketing. They plays important role in marketing management. Because, by the help of these factors the marketing manager solves the problems related to marketing appeared in business organization.

Needs: Needs exist in the individual. They describe basic human requirements. They indicate a state of felt deprivation. Marketing does not create needs. They exist in the individuals automatically with the follow of time. Different people have different needs some of them are as follows:
• Physical needs: This types of need is related to food, clothing and shelter.
• Safety needs: Under this need, people want protection from physical harm and economic threat.
• Social needs: Under this need, they want love, friendship and belongingness.
• Ego needs: Under this need, they want status recognition and self-esteem.
• Self development needs: They want knowledge, achievement and creativity.

Wants: They are specific satisfiers of needs. Specific products satisfy wants. Marketing influences wants by offering various products. Wants are unlimited. Resources are limited. Customers want high value and satisfaction for money.

Demand: They are wants for specific products. They are backed by ability and willingness to buy. Wants backed by money and willingness to spend the money become demand.

Marketing is a combination of business activities lunched to plan, price, promote and distribute want satisfying things to specific markets to secure organizational objectives. Some features of marketing can be shown as follows:

This is the age of marketing. Marketing activities are part of everyday life of human beings. All types of organization need marketing to achieve their objectives. Marketing has gained a great deal of importance for the success of modern organizations.

A human society is the combination of male and female. If both male and female are educated, they can play equal role in each steps of their life. There is a saying that a man and woman are two wheels of a cart. If one of the wheels is weak, the cart can not move ahead properly. The progress of the nation also depends up on female education, too.

Nepal is a country with different casts, languages, religions etc. So that, there are different societies in Nepal. In most of the societies, women are neglected. They are considered to be the means of reproduction and enjoyment only in some societies in Nepal but it is not good, In the contest of Nepal, only less than 30% of the females are literate whereas average literacy rate is 55%. Most of the women are linked within household activities. Because of being illiterate most of the women are conservative. They believe in superstitions. But in present condition, many girls are going to schools and collages to get knowledge. The girls in the urban areas are getting more opportunities to go school than the girls in rural areas. So that, most of the females in urban areas are educated, but in village area few females are educated and only up to S.L.C.

I am also from village area. So that, I have seen and understood their condition. In village girls should work in the house more than boys. And many of the girls don’t have good economic condition to spend in education. Although, Government of Nepal has announced free education up to 10 classes but the people also should buy pen and copy to study. So that, the condition of female education is not satisfactory in Nepal.

Nepal is an agro-based country. It is also rich in natural resources. It is not an industrialized country on required level. There are some small industries. Some traditional industries such as preparing clothes at home, making pots, making baskets etc. are cottage industries of Nepal. To operate these sorts of industries do not need a large amount of capital.

There are many cottage industries in Nepal. Some of the major cottage industries available in Nepal are weaving clothes, cloth printing, carpet-making, carpentry, carving in word, making utensils, making basket, making traditional paper, making shoes, making the tools of steel and iron, making mats, making pots, making ornaments and so on.

The condition of them in our country is not improving, rather is getting worsened. There are many reasons behind their decline. Firstly, they can not compete with modern industries which can produce a large numbers of goods and sell cheaply and quickly. Second, cottage industries are not well-organized and managed due to lack of experts and knowledge. The founders of the cottage industries are unknown about modern techniques and policies of operating business organization. Nowadays, cottage industries in Nepal are facing with many problems for their existence and revival. If the government of Nepal does not bring some new policies for them, they will disappear after some years. And other many people of Nepal also may have to face unemployment problem. Many people are living their life by working in cottage industry. So that government of Nepal should be conscious in such field.

When a man takes birth, grows, gets young, at last gets old. In his life, he sees, enjoys and encounters with many events and many personalities. Among them, some events become memorable in his life; which can't be forgotten. Like that, when I was 14 years old, an event happened with me has been fresh in my mind.

I passed class seven at the age of 12 from a government school. Then I went to Ghorahi and got admitted in a secondary school. After a few days, we had a cultural programme prganized by the students of the school. We invited all the teachers and school management committee members to watch the programme. All of them arrived there on time. There were eighteen events of our programme. Most of them were singing songs, dances, dramas and music.

I also called to announce the programme. As we started our programme, it started raining heavely. The stage of the programme was safe because it was covered with a tent. Nearly 1500 students were watching the programme. We thought that our programme had to be postponed and I told it to the audience. The audience told us not to postpone it. All of them got wet completely while they were watching the programme. I was highly satisfied with programme because it was really impressive for all. I realized that most of the audience got spellbound by watching folk dances and listening to folk songs. The programme wa memorable for me because it was the first programme which we wtudents managed and handled first in my life.

The programme also taught me a lesson; folk dances and fold songs are really impressive and entertaining because they can touch the hearts and impulse of the people. Such programme can save our culture and civilization if we preserve them properly.

The people visit many places, which has importance of religious, historical, cultural and natural beauty. We also visit different places. We can get entertainment from visiting places.

Three years ago, I visited Janakpur of Nepal with my class friends of BBS 1 st year. We went there by bus. When the bus arrived at Janakpur, we got off from the bus and went to Ram-Janki Temple. We saw many devotees going there. We also saw many hermits with long matted hair and long beard. Some people were going there performing religious dances and songs, Bhajan-Kirtana. We saw many devotees having holy dips in the sacred ponds.

As we arrived at a sacred pond, he ordered to have a holy bath, and we did it. After taking bath we went to market to buy some sweets and flowers. As we were pilgrims, we offered the sweets, flowers and coins to the temple. Then we worshiped all gods and goddesses going temple to temple. I realized the Ram-Janki Temple is very attractive ornamented and artistic. The well cared beautiful garden in front of Ram-Janki Vivaha Mandap is really attractive. We wanted to take photograph but there was not allowed to take photos at that time. Then, we went to the market, had some light snacks and returned to Dang.

Holi is colorful and famous festival of the Hindus in Nepal. It is the festival of colors, because different types of colors like; red, yellow, blue, orange, green….etc. are highly used these days of festival. Generally, it falls in the month of March. It is mostly celebrated in Terai belt but nowadays it is celebrated all over the Nepal. During the festival people of Nepal enjoy with colors by keeping others face and body.

Holi festival has old cultural and religious significance in Nepal. It is related with the story of Prahlad, who was a great devotee of God Bishnu. His father did not like his activities. And wanted to kill him, tried many times to kill him but he couldn’t. Once he said to his sister Holika to burn him in fire. She took Prahlad in her arms and sat on a burning fire. She was once blessed not to be harmed by fire, but that time blessing didn’t help her. She was killed but Prahlad was safe from fire. Here, Holika shows destructive evils and Prahlad shows a true devotee. And after that, Holi has been celebrated as the symbol of victory of virtue over evils. Holi is celebrated with great joy by the people of Nepal. They prepare sweets and eat. Small and young organize parties, sing, dance and enjoy very well. People use different colors on their faces; throw colored water to other persons. All people get wet due to colored water. That’s why Holi is merry making days for Hindus in Nepal. In this situation, everybody forgets sorrows and feel happy.

This festival has advantages and disadvantages both. In this festival, people are completely happy so that it is advantageous for this aspect. But is disadvantageous because they also show unpleasant and unwanted behavior.